Paraesthesia: .NET Development and Some Pictures of My Cat

Loaner

I’m about 100 pages from the end of The Bear and The
Dragon,
and let me tell you Tom Clancy fans out there - this is not the book
to recommend to a Clancy newbie. It’s been the hardest read I’ve had in
a long time, and not because of anything to do with the language. I
mean, I like how Clancy pays attention to the political side of battle
in his books because it adds a verisimilitude that other war novels
don’t have. That said, this one was almost entirely political and I
spent more time wondering when the SEAL team was going to show up than I
did enjoying the heavy politics and behind-the-scenes.

So, as some of you know, I have a pretty hefty CD and DVD collection at
home. What can I say? I’m a media whore.

Anyway, I normally don’t loan these things out because I typically have
bad luck getting people to return things, much less return them in the
pristine condition that I keep them in. See, when I borrow stuff, I
return it within a week because I figure if I’m going to borrow anything
I should probably get around to looking at it in a timely fashion and
return it in a timely fashion as well.

I went against my better judgment and brought a couple of movies in for
some guys in my department to borrow. I figured I would get them all
back in a week or thereabouts, pending on the schedules of the guys in
question and when they would be able to check these things out. I was
even out of town in training the following week (last week), so that’s a
good two weeks to get things back to me.

I got all but one of my movies back in my allotted “patience period.”

I asked the guy who didn’t return my movie if I could get it back. “Oh,
yeah, I’ll bring it tomorrow.”

Monday arrived. Where’s my movie? “I was at a friend’s house all
weekend.” And how, precisely, does that affect you returning my God
damn movie?

And now it’s today. I’ve been told the movie was once again forgotten
at home but this time he’s going home at lunch to get it. Here’s
hoping.

Where am I going with this? Well, basically, my point is that I guess
some people have a certain inherent level of responsibility and some
folks don’t. Now, I’m not at all saying this guy is irresponsible,
just that some people don’t “forget it at home.” He’s a younger guy, and
what I begin to wonder is if all young people today are the same way,
where certain levels of responsibility (or respect?) don’t exist (or
don’t matter?), whereas my generation has a more inherent sense of such
things. Then I wonder whether it isn’t the same way between my parents’
generation and mine - do they think we lack responsibility and/or
discipline? Probably so.

And that sort of worries me, because if the trend continues then what I
see on the horizon is anarchy rather than salvation. Maybe too much
freedom and not enough discipline is not necessarily the best way to
bring kids up. Or maybe I’m extrapolating too much from a single
isolated case.

Finally, I got a message a bit ago from the guy in charge of
YouBored.com, a site where I have entered
contests before and won free movie passes. Remember my Malibu
incident? Well,
they’ve since updated the look, feel, and quality of their site and they
seem interested in enhancing that quality further by recruiting yours
truly to become a volunteer staff writer. I’m waiting to hear back on
the details, but it could be a cool thing. I’ll keep you posted.